Balancing the Budget

Sir: Your Essay "How To Cut the U.S. Budget" [Dec. 8], in the paragraph on Agriculture, raises some questions that cast doubt on the amount of research done by your writer. You claim the farm to be the home "of the nation's most coddled minority"--coddled by whom? Certainly not by the U.S. Department of Agriculture whose planning and continual changing of the Feed Grain Program has brought the price of corn down again this year. You blame rising food prices on Government subsidies--how about the fact that the U.S. housewife today wants her food completely prepared for her before she buys it, does not this add considerably to the cost of food in the supermarket? Furthermore, as a nation, we still enjoy the lowest food costs (in terms of annual income of consumers) of any industrial nation. True, hunger stalks half the world, but the U.S. farmer will not gain much by giving food away--the good feeling one gets from acts of charity will not help pay off the implement and fertilizer companies. Perhaps what concerns me the most is that a city slum dweller with an income of less than $3,000 a year becomes a prime target for the War on Poverty; but a farmer with a net income of less than $3,000 a year is part of a "coddled minority."

JOHN D. UPFIELD Editor

The Villager Lake Village, Ind.

Sir: By supporting appropriations for the SST, TIME has demonstrated a research incompetence exceeded only by that of the Federal Aviation Administration.

You would be hard-pressed to find a competent acoustician, heart specialist or surgeon who would find the startle of the sonic boom acceptable to society. Air routes that avoid populated areas and economists who agree with the FAA are equally rare.

DR. ALAN RHODES

Willoughby, Ohio

Sir: Thank you for a bold and enlightening perspective on economics. Also, thanks for such a wisely proposed allocation of our American funds.

JOHN MAHANNA

Chicago

Three Cheers for Mac

Sir: Robert McNamara's accomplishments [Dec. 8] will live long after his littie hecklers are forgotten. One may not agree with all of his policies or actions, but in this complex world he had the courage to try. In this hour, which must be painful to him, the American people should give him a rousing cheer for a job well done.

JOHN J. GIBA

Rosemont, Pa.

Sir: In lamenting the departure of Mr. McNamara, my boss for the past two years, I should like to make a few observations on our era: glamour and personality, petty and inconsequential qualities seem to play much too great a role in the selection of our national leaders. Mr. McNamara, with his drab, oldfashioned, almost spartan public image, has proved a welcome and competent exception to the rule. His unquestioned integrity, coupled with his demonstrated ability, loyalty and courage, mark him as one of the truly unsung heroes of our time. It is regrettable that such enormous talents are to be relegated to the second-class showcase of the World Bank presidency.

FRANK S. JAMES III Second Lieutenant, U.S.A. 25th Infantry Division Viet Nam

Sir: You report the news that "the Defense Secretary would soon leave his post for the relative backwater of the World Bank's presidency." This comparison is between heading an international lending institution that has only about $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year to spend to raise the standard of living of 1.5 billion underprivileged people on one hand, and heading the most powerful institution in the world that shoots away twice that amount in the space of a month in that "limited" war in Viet Nam on the other. No doubt this is real downgrading.

EROL HAKER Nairobi, Kenya

Open Letter

Sir: Thank you for the excellent Essay "On Being An American Parent" [Dec. 15]. Oh, how I wish every parent and future parent would read it and take it to heart!

You quoted the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with the line, "We gave her everything money could buy." What about a following line, "Fun is the one thing money can't buy."

I love my parents and I know they love me, but they've ruined my life. Your paragraphs under "Listen" very well sum up what I'm trying to say. I could never tell my parents anything, it was always "I'm too busy . . . too tired . . . thats not important . . . that's stupid . . . can't you think of better things . . . oh, your friends are wrong . . . they're stupid." As a result, I stopped telling my parents anything. All communication ceased. We never had that very important thing--fun.

Oh, we had love. Prompted on my side by an ever-present fear of my mother and pity for my father, and prompted on their side by the thought that I was their responsibility and if I went wrong, they would be punished by God.

After four rotten years in a Catholic girls school (I did have two or three very wonderful teachers) I'm now stuck in an even worse Catholic women's college. Only the best for me! They knew I didn't want to come but made me anyway.

Their daughter wasn't going to be corrupted! I had already been saved from the evils of early dating and doing things that "everyone else" did.

What is the result of this excellent upbringing? I'm 18 years old, drink whenever" I get the chance, have smoked pot, and as of a very eventful Thanksgiving vacation, am no longer a virgin. Why? Was it my parents or just me? I'm so very confused--but who can I talk to. Not my parents. My parents could read this and never dream it was their daughter.

I have only one important plea to parents . . . Listen, listen, and listen again. Please, I know the consequences and I'm in hell.

A COLLEGE STUDENT

Ohio

Like Bonnie, Like Clyde

Sir: Bonnie and Clyde [Dec. 8] is not a film for adults, and I believe that much of its degradation has come from that fact. Adults are used to being entertained in theaters--coming out smiling and humming the title song--but our generation (I am 18, a college freshman) was brought up in an era of documentary movies and television. We can accept documentation, tragedy, human frailty and downfall on a Saturday-night date to the local theater. The reason it was so silent, so horribly silent in the theater at the end of the film was because we liked Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, we identified with them and wanted to be like them, and their deaths made us realize that newspaper headlines are not so far removed from our quiet dorm rooms.

LYNDA BENDER

Peoria, Ill.

Sir: I realize that you must report the facts, but I'm afraid your article on "the new in films" only serves to further condition us to receive, with minds at half-mast, future movies on the acceptance, tolerance, even the glorification of violence. I'm certain many of us look forward eagerly to such productions as the life of Adolf Hitler, the poor misguided Austrian paperhanger, complete with scenes of a Nazi unconcernedly dashing a child against a brick wall and Use Koch making lampshades of human skin--all in glorious Technicolor, of course.

Now how about a feature article denouncing violence for what it is--the real obscenity on the American scene?

W. E. LITTLE Richmond, Va.

Stuffing the Ballot Box

Sir: This year there can be no question who will be the Man of the Year, if not

Man of the Century: Lyndon B. Johnson, for standing firm on Viet Nam despite the vilification and protests of people here and throughout the free world, the same ones who in more reasonable and peaceful times will owe him gratitude for a safer world.

ROBERT COREY Brockton, Mass.

Sir: The man who most affects the thoughts of today's millions of urban dwellers: the street criminal.

W. A. CARRELL Detroit

Sir: Primitivo Garcia and the people like him are the real Men of the Year every year. As long as a few of his kind remain, there is still hope for humanity.

MIKE MEAGHER Chippewa Falls, Wis.

Sir: The Shah of Iran, who lifted Iran into the 20th century.

S. JOSEPH Teheran

Sir: Cyrus R. Vance, a top diplomat, and peacemaker, for his superb work in solving the Cyprus crisis.

J. T. DONTOPOULOS

Athens

Sir: George F. Kennan, whose intelligence, vision, insight and unparalleled wisdom deserve a much wider audience.

MARION HARRIS Parkersburg, W.Va.

Sir: Charles de Gaulle.

STEPHEN J. DONAHUE San Francisco

Sir: Robert Kennedy.

MAUREEN ALYCE SHUL Cherry Point, N.C.

Sir: General William Westmoreland.

SONDRA HERREID Sioux Falls, S. Dak.

Sir: Pope Paul VI, of course.

JUAN GONZALEZ-MORENO Manhattan

Sir: America's public school teachers.

WILLIAM A. AMMERMAN Clarion, Pa.

Sir: The American farmer.

JOHN D. WOODRUFF College Corner, Ohio

Sir: God, from whom all our blessings come.

MRS. SHERRY HOWARD REEDY Geneva, Ill.

: The Devil.

W. E. NAWROCKI, M.D. Wenatchee, Wash.

: Billy Graham.

(MRS.) CAROLYN AMBROSE

Westbury, N.Y.

Sir: I don't think TIME should even have a Man of the Year for 1967. The state of the world shouldn't really be blamed on one man, should it?

PEGGY MCGREEVY, '71 reighton University Omaha

To the C.O.R.

Sir: While serving in the Army as a medical officer, I was assigned to Kien Tuong

Provincial Hospital. I met with several of the members of the Committee of Responsibility who toured our hospital in search of children who could not be treated in these "woefully inadequate hospitals." Let me say that any children with congenital defects, of which there are many more than war injuries, any non-war-injured, and any war-injured children above 14, such as one 15-year-old boy blinded and with both hands amputated because he inadvertently lifted a mine, could "not be considered" by the committee. Such selection of patients shows sheer hypocrisy to me: a truly humanitarian group would not "select" one patient and ignore another. Why must the selection be limited only to those with war injuries, which, I may add, in our province and, I suspect, in other provinces as well, were caused by mines set up by the V.C. in nearly 90% of the cases. The committee's feelings of humanitarianism to me are a shield for get-out-of-Viet-Nam-at-any-cost propaganda.

Rather than bring the children and their families to the U.S., wouldn't it make more sense to set up a modern semi-sophisticated adjunct to the already present Saigon Medical School, where we presently have volunteer U.S. physicians, coordinated through the A.M.A., teaching at regular intervals? If there is to be a selection of only 30 patients a month as stated, how much easier and what a tremendously needed benefit to the Vietnamese physicians and medical students in Saigon it would be if such facilities were located in their native land.

CHARLES J. EGGERSTEDT, M.D. Ventura, Calif.

"Buddha America"

Sir: Deo gratias for your article on Cardinal Spellman [Dec. 8]. Perhaps now people will realize that it is men like Cardinal Spellman who are representative of the Roman Catholic priesthood, not men like Groppi and Kavanaugh.

MARY GORMAN Chicago

Sir: On a flight to Tokyo a couple of years ago, a Japanese passenger tried to make conversation. He spoke no English and communication was limited. All of a sudden a man stood up in front and the Japanese man proudly showed his knowledge of people by pointing to the man and saying: "Buddha, America." It was the late Cardinal Spellman, on his way to visit our boys in Korea and Viet Nam, as he did every year. Ever since, he remains in my memory as the Buddha, U.S.A.

(MRS.) AVA BROWNLEY Chicago

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